The managing director of the ‘think tank’ Overseas Development Institute, Rathin Roy, clarified that this goal will only be possible if “everyone does the right thing”.
Source: RT in Spanish
Progress in eradicating extreme poverty could mean that by 2050 there will be no country classified as low income, maintains a report from the Center for Global Development (CGD), based in Washington, USA.
“Low-income countries could disappear as a group, with the proportion of the world living in high-income countries likely to more than double from its current 16%,” says the Institute.
According to projections, extreme poverty, which is equivalent to living on less than $2.15 a day, will be reduced in about 25 years below 2% worldwide, up from 8% in 2022. In Africa, where this figure is higher, it would drop from 29% to 7%.
In addition, it is plausible that more than two thirds of the world population will live on more than 10 dollars a day, compared to the current 42%.
Meanwhile, much slower growth is forecast in high-income countries, with GDP per capita rising just 20% in the two decades after 2019, while in low- and middle-income countries that percentage is set to double .
Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the CGD and one of the report’s authors, expressed concern about low growth in rich countries, noting that The aging of the population it can lead them to adopt isolationist and authoritarian policies in response to recessions.
“If we look at the demographic trends, everything seems quite positive for the low and middle income countries as a whole,” said the expert, aforementioned by Guardian. “That’s why I’m more optimistic about them, with the caveat that part of this depends on what rich countries do,” he added.
Kenny pointed out that inequality is also likely to remain and poverty to continue to exist, although higher growth should mean that most people have stable employment and incomeinstead of depending on informal and precarious work or subsistence agriculture.
The managing director of the ‘think tank’ Overseas Development Institute, Rathin Roy, warned in turn that Kenny’s predictions will only be feasible “if everyone does the right thing”.
“In the last 100 years, people have not done the right thing,” he said. “For most of my adult life world poverty fell, until three years ago it began to rise due to various factors […], and getting it down again is proving very difficult,” he said. He added that it is important that developed countries, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, take care of their less fortunate citizens to eradicate the poverty that persists there, despite its economic growth.
